


A Murder of Crows

by meguri_aite



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Gen, Mafia AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2547485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kiyoko pulls Yachi into the Karasuno crime family.</p><p> <i>“So, do you think you’d be interested in that?”</i></p><p>  <i>Yachi heard someone stutter out a high-pitched ‘Yes!’ solid ten seconds before it registered with her that the embarrassingly squeaky voice had been her own.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Murder of Crows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Icie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icie/gifts).



> Happy Interhigh, Icie! I hope you enjoy reading the story, because it was great fun to work on your prompt! :)
> 
> And thanks to my [fantastic beta](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/pseuds/Himmelreich) for her comments and ideas - without your briefs, this story would have been fifty times less fun (to write) ♥ this story owes you way more than I can tell! And heartfelt thanks go to a certain overlord of a rodent household who helped me plot murder, arson and jaywalking for characters she doesn't even know :>

To say she was beautiful would have been a gross understatement.

She was mind-blowingly, jaw-droppingly, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, from the thick slant of her lashes right down to the shiny tips of her neat nails. Fascinated by the play of light in her hair and the sleek shine of her lip gloss, Yachi distantly realized that even at gunpoint she would probably not remember a word of this conversation, but it just felt too good to soak up in this cool, serious voice telling her something about, about –

“So, do you think you’d be interested in that?”

Yachi heard someone stutter out a high-pitched ‘Yes!’ solid ten seconds before it registered with her that the embarrassingly squeaky voice had been her own. She closed her eyes, mortified enough to snap back from staring dreamily at the mole on the cheek of the cool beauty in front of her. Who, by all accounts, should be leaving Yachi after this little display and go back to whatever orbit unearthly beings gravitated along. Yachi cracked open one eye, but instead of an empty chair she was faced with an eyeful of dazzlingly hopeful Kiyoko Shimizu.

“Yes, sure,” Yachi repeated weakly. With growing understanding that at some point she would probably have to figure out what she’d just agreed to, Yachi asked, “Are you sure I’m the right person for that?”

“I’m hoping you can help us,” the divine creature said. “I asked around among other design students in our college, but no one seemed to be very interested in doing a graphic design job for a small family…business,” she said with a delicate cough. “I am glad to meet such understanding of our…special circumstances in you, Yachi-san.”

Yachi was pretty sure that if Shimizu continued to smile at her like that, she wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out she signed a lifelong contract to be her slave, sell a kidney or join a street gang.

“My pleasure,” she croaked. A tiny voice at the back of her mind suggested that she probably even wouldn’t mind that too much.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Shimizu beamed. “I’m sure you’ll make an excellent forger!”

And before the mist in Yachi’s eyes could clear up, Shimizu caught her under the elbow and whisked her away to ‘meet the family’. The last thought in Yachi’s head before she found herself seated in an unfamiliar car was a mental image of herself in a beret, peering into a Monet painting, and she had to laugh at her own overzealous imagination.

* * *

Whatever Yachi had expected Shimizu’s family business to be, it definitely didn’t involve a terrifyingly tall man sitting in the doorway, polishing what looked like a suspiciously real rifle in a melancholy fashion. His long hair obscured his gloomy face, his long legs barricaded the entrance, and Yachi struggled to find her stomach in her shoes.

“I’m back,” said Shimizu, who on her Olympian heights was obviously unaffected by the threatening aura emanating from the stranger, and serenely stepped over his legs in one graceful movement. Yachi felt faint at the idea of going the same route, but if the alternative involved actually talking to the terrifying titan, she had no choice but to try.

Thankfully, she was spared the dilemma, because the gloomy giant slowly rose to his feet.

“Do we have guests?” he inquired, eyeing Yachi solemnly from behind his seaweed hair, and looming over her like the tower of Piza. “Please feel at home,” he said, and Yachi jerked her head in a nod, doing her damnedest not to stare at the rifle he was holding in one hand, helpfully pointing at the doorway in a macabre welcome.

“Asahi, please stop scaring our newly-minted forger,” said Shimizu with a smile and patted his arm away from the way. Yachi was immediately filled with the warmth of gratitude to her gallant savior, but unfortunately, the scary giant seemed undeterred. He bent nearly in half, bringing his grim face terrifyingly close to Yachi’s for an inspection.

“Asahi, what are you doing?”

This time, Yachi’s salvation came in the form of an amiable young man appearing from behind Shimizu’s back. He had a very open, friendly face, and the look of a person who was capable of and used to putting things right, even if it meant facing gloomy titans from hell, or so Yachi hoped.

“Asahi, stop towering over our guest and spreading your spores of negativity around,” he waved dismissively at the giant with a good-natured laugh, and ushered a still-petrified Yachi into the house. “Please don’t mind him, he just really likes cute people and things, and easily forgets how intimidating he can look. But you shouldn’t let it get to you, he’s really just a big softie!”

With a cautious backward glance at the doorway, Yachi thought it wasn’t entirely impossible to see a certain fleeting resemblance to a particularly overgrown Basset Hound in the wistful face of the man haunting the entrance, but she decided that the menacing shine of the rifle somehow damaged the credibility of the simile.

Meanwhile, her trials weren’t over yet, for there were even more new people appearing in the hallway, each of them more intimidating than the last, all of them in black, and Shimizu Kiyoko was waving at her to come forward.

“Everyone, please meet our forger,” she said, gently touching Yachi on the shoulder.

“N-nice to meet you! I’m Hachi- Yachi Hitoka,” she stammered, wondering whether the blush could creep on her face when it was drained bloodless with fear, and bowed low with a tiny hope that the people crowding her would have magically become less scary by the time she looked at them again.

Alas, that was not meant to be. A mean-looking tall guy with bits of wire hanging loosely around his neck was skulking in the farthest corner and sending her bored looks over the rims of his glasses. Someone with a sleepy face and bandaged hands was telling him something in a low voice, but the glasses guy didn’t seem impressed. Next to them, a freckled guy gave her a nervous smile, which would have made him look the opposite of threatening if it wasn’t for the gun holster on his person, which overall made Yachi feel vaguely concerned for everyone in the room.

But the most terrifying sight was two guys wearing matching leather jackets, sunglasses and manic expressions. The shorter one sported the weirdest hairdo Yachi had seen in her entire life, which looked as if a tiny excitable porcupine nestled on his head. His buddy, on the opposite, had his hair shaved off – probably to compensate for the porcupine-ness of his comrade’s – and was sporting gilded brass knuckles with ACE written on them, if Yachi’s eyes were not deceiving her. They were both fidgeting, grinning like deranged and generally giving an impression that they were about to burst into action that spelled nothing but Yachi’s imminent demise.

“I hope you feel at home, Yachi-san,” said a person she hadn’t noticed before, shoving the scary duo behind his back. He looked surprisingly normal, and spoke in a warm voice, which, coupled with the lack of any weapons on his body, cheered Yachi up somewhat. She even thought that in his apron – curiously, also black – and rolled up sleeves he looked like your friendly neighbourhood shopkeeper. “The boys can be a bit rowdy, but they are perfectly respectful, even if things get a bit noisy sometimes.”

“You know how it is in large families, don’t you?” added the helpful guy who had rescued her earlier, materializing on his right side. “Welcome to Karasuno, Yachi-san,” he beamed at her.

“You will get to know everyone soon enough,” said the calm guy, smiling. “But first, food! There is no welcome like a proper meal.”

This seemed to immediately divert everyone’s attention to the direction of the kitchen, where they drifted off to as one large swarm – or rather, a murder of crows, thought Yachi, following their suit. Shimizu caught her eye and whispered, “You are doing very well,” before Yachi could ask what it was exactly that she was doing. Beauty was a terrible power, she thought weakly, but didn’t rush to confirm her worst suspicions just yet.

* * *

On a full stomach things always looked lighter, Yachi thought, realizing that she felt almost relaxed, watching everyone stuff their faces with the delicious food brought by Sawamura Daichi (though he had insisted she call him Daichi like everyone else, and she felt she was doing the job of remembering everyone’s names pretty well this time, spurred by fear and interest in equal proportions).

“Did you like the food?” he asked, noticing she’d put her chopsticks down. “I take special pride in my gyoza, they sell like Shimizu’s shortcakes,” he added with a laugh.

“You run a food shop?” Yachi couldn’t hide the surprise in her voice. She was almost convinced she had landed herself in a den of gangsters, led by the siren voice of Shimizu Kiyoko, but maybe she had underestimated the dangers in catering industry? What if it was a high-security end of business that required a whole staff of mean-looking guys to protect family recipes that were passed down the generations of gyoza-makers?

“I do,” said Daichi with a smile. “Back in the salad days we lost our old turf to the Dateko gang” – Yachi couldn’t help noticing how Asahi’s face went alarmingly droopy at that, and she could swear something nebulous and dark formed above his head – “and had to find a new place, so I asked our old mentor Ukai-san to help us out. Ah, old times. Of course, the old man grumbled like mad, but he let us stay at his shop if someone learned the trade and helped him run the store. Turned out better than I’d thought.”

“Except Ukai-san won’t like you calling him an old man,” chuckled Sugawara.

“Ah,” said Yachi, prompted both by her curiosity and the relaxed atmosphere. “So, um, you are men of many trades, then?”

“Spot on,” Daichi answered her question. “We run a few stores in the neighborhood, and take on some other odd jobs. You know, whatever needs to be done, and the boys are good at a great deal of things. Noya and Tanaka are our best muscle, very energetic, and on occasion they make mean debt-collectors, for example, Ennoshita is good with cold weapons, and Tsukishima here has a knack for explosives.”

He waved at the guys proudly as he spoke, which made Nishinoya and Tanaka fidget and sparkle twice as aggressively as before, and utterly failed to impress Tsukishima. Yamaguchi, who was sitting next to him, sent her a sweet, if somewhat apologetic, smile.

High on all the new information, Yachi took a deep breath and decided to take the plunge.

“Do your… diverse services include assassinations as well?” She was surprised that she actually managed to get the sentence out, but Yachi was finding out that this kind of straightforwardness was oddly addictive.

“Sure, we take on hitman jobs, too.” Dachi made it sound like it wasn’t much different from walking a neighbour’s dog in the park, and Yachi’s head was light with feeling that this attitude, too, was very catchy.

“You’ve met Asahi, right?” chimed in Sugawara comfortably. “He’s our most versatile gunman, even if he babies his favourite rifle too much.”

Asahi looked up at that, with what Yachi was beginning to recognize as a shy smile on him.

“There is also our…sniper cell,” continued Sugawara with an airy wave of his hand, “but they are away on a job at the moment. You’ll get to meet them soon enough, and work with them, too.”

Yachi licked her lips nervously and asked the question that had been long overdue.

“And what will my part be in it? I don’t really know anything about… gunmanship.” She doubted she could even aim a ball in any sports, let alone point a gun at someone.

Daichi and Sugawara both looked at her, no sign of mockery or threat on their faces, as if they were inviting her to a school club or something.

“Your help would be indispensable,” Daichi said seriously. “Without a forger to make up false identities for undercover work and papers to back them up, not even our oddball duo can go very far.”

“I’m sure a creative person can have tons of fun with that,” Sugawara smiled encouragingly. “And if you want to have a break from designing all the fake IDs and other props, you can always help at Shimuzu’s cake shop. Our girl here can add fifty untraceable poisons to a macaroon, but she won’t say no to extra flourish with cake frosting, am I right?”

Shimizu’s face turned a fascinating shade of pink as she admitted with an adorably sheepish smile, “I can’t draw at all.”

Everything in Yachi’s head was butterflies, celebratory gunshots and bright cake icing.

“I’ll do my best!” she said, lips tingling with excitement and anxiety. Who could have known that sometimes reality could be more bizarre than even French berets.

* * *

Three weeks later, Yachi was growing more at ease in the business run by the extended family of divine Kiyoko Shimizu. Her job was probably the world’s tamest mafia job, because it was mostly her at the computer, connected to the actual action by the barest thread of identities she conjured up without much trouble. She couldn’t really discuss her part-time job with her college friends, who were doing internships at more glamorous places, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind that either, not when she was learning less conventional ways to apply her knowledge, especially in such curious company.

The fact was, she was growing comfortable around the crows of the Karasuno family. Now that their looks and weapons no longer sent her into silent stupors, she was learning there was a different side to each of them. Nishinoya, who was so frighteningly loud and boisterous and very, very keen on being the very image of manliness, did backflips like a tiny acrobat when he was too excited. Tanaka might have a face that belonged on all wanted posters all over the country, but he never refused to help her, and also baked mean apple pies. Asahi, who looked like murder incarnate on a good day, actually carried grocery bags for every old lady too feeble to run away from him on sight. He also had a questionably charming habit of stalking Yachi and Nishinoya around the house to offer them buckets of ice-cream, which she hadn’t found a polite way to refuse yet, and therefore had probably consumed a yearly quota of in those few weeks.

The only thing that still quite literally eluded her was the mysterious sniper cell, the family’s most exclusive unit. Somehow their paths never crossed; they were sent to new assignments as soon as they came back, ‘to learn the tricks of the trade in action, since they are not cut out for learning like normal humans’, as Daichi once grumbled.

She tried asking around about them, but the diversity of answers she got was so wild that she wondered if they were talking about the same people. Yamaguchi readily said that both Hinata and Kageyama were talented, if not very conventional. Noya proclaimed Hinata, the sniper, to be his favourite family member, earning a few mournful stares from Asahi. Tanaka yelled proudly that he taught the brat everything he knew, which immediately became a contention point with Nishinoya, until Sugawara pulled them apart saying that while Tanaka and Noya were definitely not without talents, neither of them were snipers, so they had no business claiming Hinata’s success as their own. After a gentle reminder not to make Daichi angry, their protests, nearly together with their statures, neatly faded into background.

Her conversation with Tsukishima left Yachi with a polar opposite impression. Unimpressed as ever, the explosives specialist seemed vaguely annoyed with her question, and limited his input to calling Hinata and Kageyama ‘illiterate hotheads’. Ennoshita, who seemed to have been charged with supervising his juniors when Daichi and Sugawara were not in sight, commented that not everyone had to have a double physics and chemistry degree to be good at their job, but agreed that the duo was hard to control.

The longer the suspense dragged on, the wilder Yachi’s imagination grew, and by the time she actually ran into them, she was ready for anything but the actual thing.

Which was finding two grown-up guys skulking in the flower bushes behind Shimizu’s shop, where Yachi had spent the last hour drawing angels on Kiyoko’s latest batch of cupcakes. The strangers were whispering in tones that made it harder to ignore than to miss them.

“Do you really want us to come back asking for help? It’s almost as good as failing the job!”

“We’re not failing! We’re – we’re regrouping!”

Yachi leaned in to get a better look at the speakers from her convenient vantage point of the small balcony on the second floor of the building.

“Fine, but why are we regrouping in the goddamn bushes?” The taller speaker hissed between his clenched teeth, visibly annoyed with having to crouch on his long limbs.

“Do you have a better idea, mister King of All Spotters?” With twigs and leaves in his hair and mad hand gesticulation, the other guy – who Yachi realized with excitement had to be the sniper of the notorious duo, Hinata - looked about as dignified as Noya on a bad hair day. “And anyway, it’s not like we’re completely lost. We know where to look for the mark, and no thanks to you, too.”

“Your reliance on Nekoma’s tips will come to bite you in the ass some day.”

“Don’t complain, so far it has only saved our asses. And Kenma’s a friend.” Hinata quite unsuccessfully tried looking down his nose on Kageyama, who was still a head taller than him even in their visibly uncomfortable position.

“Keep telling yourself that, stupid Hinata. Or better even, think about how we can stop the package from exchanging hands even knowing the time and the place of the transaction.”

“Goddamn posh people and their VIP suites. Can never zoom in on a person cleanly with all their security.”

“Do you even use your head, stupid Hinata? This time, no casualties. The orders were pretty clear, everyone walks out alive, but the harddrive never gets into the mark’s hands.”

“And we even know where the package will be at the time of the exchange,” groaned Hinata, tearing at his hair. “But we can’t just waltz into the building, we’re not those Seijous, who can just pull one of their many strings and show up anywhere they like.”

Yachi thought she heard Kageyama grit his teeth in frustration, and on the impulse she asked, “Can’t you just destroy the hard drive? If you are not to shoot people, just aim at the package.”

With synchronized yelps and matching wild looks, Karasuno family’s most elite sniper duo practically jumped out of the bushes, scaring Yachi enough to hide behind the balcony rails, but not enough to leave her post. This place did weird things to her self-preservation instincts, she thought, because she worried more about not learning more details of their job than about for her own well-being in close proximity to snipers she hadn’t even been introduced to yet.

“Who are you?” asked Hinata at the same time when Kageyama demanded, “Shoot the package?”

Yachi was all too glad to answer the spotter’s question, fearing that they would send her away if she didn’t immediately prove herself useful.

“W-well, you said that your only goal is to prevent the transaction from happening, and if-“ she gulped down the lump of nerves in her throat – “if you can’t aim at people, maybe you can zoom in on the package itself? By shooting the hard drive, you will destroy it, and there will be nothing left to sell. Transaction won’t take place, and no one will die. You said you know where the package will be?”

Hinata nodded energetically, seemingly back in good spirits.

“Kenma said it will be brought into the suite from another room in the hotel. The security inside the building is always tough, but if we find a stake-out at a far enough place-”

“They won’t be expecting it,” said Kageyama grudgingly. “If it’s in an empty room, why should they expect a sniper. It might work, if we take into account the possible target placement and the angles…”

He trailed off in a string of technobabble that was completely lost on Yachi. Hinata sent a huge grin in Yachi’s direction.

“He’s gonna do it. It means the job is as good as done. Thank you, you really helped out with this one!” Then, with a little frown that did nothing to conceal his obvious good mood, he asked, “But who are you?”

“She’s obviously Yachi Hitoka… but the ground heat won’t be a problem… the forger. Weren’t you listening to everyone talk about it… the slant rage is a concern though... stupid Hinata?”

Yachi was impressed with how Kageyama managed to get it out without breaking his string of undecipherable muttering. Unfazed, Hinata sent another wide grin and a handwave her way.

“Nice to meet you, Yachi-san!” he said. “How can we thank you for help?”

She knew what she was going to say next even before he had asked his question. Whatever remained of her sense of danger was feebly protesting somewhere in the backside of her brain, but since the sniper duo was decidedly unthreatening, and her curiosity was off the charts, so took a deep breath and spoke up.

“Take me with you!” she said without even stuttering, and then hastily added, “i-if you don’t mind. I really want to see how it happens.”

She wanted to see what happened, what exactly she had become a part of, she thought. She wanted to feel how it was from close by, and not – quite literally – by proxy. And maybe, the tiny voice at the back of her mind said, she really wanted to belong with them, with this family. Be a little more like Shimizu Kiyoko, added an even tinier voice.

“Sure, if you wanna go? Somehow, no one usually join us on ops,” said Hinata with an easy shrug.

Surprised with his ready answer, she thoughtlessly asked, “Why?”

“Must be because of this guy’s mumbling,” Hinata pointed at Kageyama. “I think it scares them off.”

“I can hear you, stupid Hinata! Multiplied by the coefficient, hmm, not impossible, the flanker won’t get in the way…”

Yachi stifled a giggle, Hinata rolled his eyes with a harrumph, and Kageyama frowned in concentration.

* * *

In a perplexing contrast to Yachi’s swanky, sharp-suited, stilettoed dreams of glamorous mafia adventures, the reality was suspiciously similar to loitering in a lobby. The three of them were crammed into a tiny loft room of a house that was pronounced – by the demanding spotter, obviously – as the only suitable stakeout for the operation, and the only thing they seemed to be killing was time.

Kageyama seemed to be involved in some sort of shamanistic effort that involved pacing around, taking measurements, furiously scribbling on scraps of paper, nervously drinking from what was probably his fifth milk carton and peering into his binoculars (all three pairs of them) in all directions. Hinata was seemingly unoccupied, which meant he got to fidget around the room, picking up and putting down various things until Kageyama threatened to send him flying through the window if he didn’t stop getting in his way. Yachi was given a lightweight pair of binoculars along with a vague instruction to keep her eyes open, and was promptly left to her own devices.

Prompted by the growing feeling of uselessness and curiosity, Yachi tried to monitor the two rooms pointed out to her earlier by Kageyama as the venues of main action. The room where the hard drive would be placed before the negotiations started was currently empty, not counting a couple of intimidatingly hunky dudes in black that regularly peeked in to check it.

Everything changed once a different pair of hunks, even more imposing and self-important that those keeping watch, brought a small shiny suitcase into the room. It was meant to lie there until the end of negotiations, when it would be picked up by its new owner.

Or not. The very second that the armed goons showed up, Kageyama gave a series of brisk and completely illegible orders. Before Yachi could try to understand what he meant, Hinata snapped into action. The aimless fidgeting was gone as if it has never been there, giving way to intense concentration. He became unsettlingly quiet, wordlessly following his spotter’s every command.  The assault rifle would have looked comically oversized in his hands, except there was nothing funny in the way his face was devoid of any emotion but the hunger of a crouching predator.

For the first time in weeks, Yachi was truly scared.

The whole process barely took a few minutes. Kageyama’s rapid and seemingly disconnected instructions fine-tuned Hinata’s stance into whatever the spotter had his eyes on, and judging by the lack of any bickering, whatever imperceptible things he demanded, Hinata obediently adjusted.

As soon as the room in Yachi’s looking glass showed clear of all people, the stake-out loft was filled thick silence, barely disturbed by the sound of breathing. After a minute of agonizing quiet, Kageyama, his knuckes white with tension, spoke under his breath.

“Go.”

And Yachi, her binoculars forgotten, eyes wide with anticipation, watched Hinata close his eyes and pull the trigger.

They couldn’t hear the sound of shuttering glass, but they could very well see it explode in a shower of glittering pieces, and they could definitely see the commotion that ensued. Hinata put away his rifle, and as far as Yachi could tell, all of his concentrated menace with it, grabbed the pair of binoculars closest to him, and started whooping excitedly.

“Did you see it? Did you see it? Right in the middle.” He was pointing at the window in the general direction of the suites they had their eyes on for the whole day. Hinata was nearly jumping with glee, and it was very hard to remember how still he had been just a few moments ago.

Kageyama, too, seemed to have shaken off most of his would-up tension.

“What do you think spotters are for, of course I saw it,” he grumbled absent-mindedly, still clutching his pair of binoculars. “It’s not right in the middle, you were off by two centimeters, but the shot still made it.  Nothing inside it would be intact after this shot.”

Yachi, too, decided to hold on to her binoculars. It showed her the now-familar hunks run into the room, frantically look around, trying to assess the damage. They saw the bullet holes on the cover of the shiny suitcase, and the look of terror on their faces was almost funny.

Almost, because the next thing the Karasuno trio saw was the one of the men peering into the bullet hole, shaking the case, and then shooting its locks open. Yachi gasped, and then did Hinata, too, because what they – and quite possibly all the people in the swanky hotel room – did not expect to see was the glaring emptiness where the coveted hard drive should have been.

This prompted a new wave of frenzy among the security personnel: Yachi saw their lips move as they talked on the phone and shouted orders at each other, observed all their agitated gestures, watched their bulky silhouettes dart to and fro in the room.

Hinata seemed to be struck speechless, frozen towhere he had been standing when the suitcase was laid open. Kageyama was breathing as if he was running short of air, his hands clenched into fists so tight they were shaking. Yachi desperately tried to think of anything to do to help them, to break that heavy silence, when it was glaringly obvious that they failed, but it was impossible to deduce how.

A soft ringing noise started everyone out of their stupor. Kageyama, skin around his eyes still tight with suppressed emotion, fished his phone out of his pocket and stared at it mutely for a moment. Whatever he saw there, it definitely whipped him into further agitation, because he threw the phone in Hinata’s direction and left the room without saying as much as a word.

Hinata, who caught Kageyama’s phone in mid-air, exhaled loudly.

“Of course,” he said, and tugged at his hair with a groan. “It’s the Grand Spotter, of course.”

When Yachi asked to see what was there, he handed her the phone with the message still open. In it, she saw a selfie of an unfamiliar young guy flashing a cheeky smile at the camera, posing with what she deduced was the very same hard drive the Karasuno sniper cell had been trying to destroy.

The caption read, ‘The perfect spotter knows how to shoot, when to shoot, and when not to shoot. Watch and learn, Tobio-chan!’

“Next time, we won’t lose,” Hinata said, the dangerous gleam back in his eyes. “Next time, we’ll definitely beat him – right, Yachi-san?”

“M-me, too?” Yachi stammered out.

Hinata cocked his head to the side and smiled.

“Of course, Yachi-san. You’re one of us now, and as Karasuno, we’ll beat him! Our family will not lose to anyone.”

Overwhelmed, Yachi closed her eyes, the images flashing before her eyes - of Shimizu talking to her, Daichi calling everyone for food, Asahi leaning against a wall, cradling his rifle, Tanaka fistbumping Noya, Tsukishima looking at everyone over the frames of his glasses – and nodded empathetically.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we will.”


End file.
